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public health
EPA to Stop Counting Public Health Benefits When Setting Air Pollution Standards
"This policy will cause more deaths of vulnerable Americans, like infants and the elderly," said one critic. "Also, it appears to be a violation of the Clean Air Act."
Jan 12, 2026
The Trump administration plans to stop calculating the monetary value of the public health benefits from reducing air pollution and instead focus exclusively on the cost to industry when setting pollution limits, the New York Times reported Monday.
Intragency emails and other documents reviewed by the Times revealed that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to stop tallying the financial value of health benefits caused by limiting fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone when regulating polluting industries.
Research published in 2023 showed that PM2.5 pollution from coal-fired power plants alone killed approximately 460,000 people in the US from 1999 to 2020.
"This policy will cause more deaths of vulnerable Americans, like infants and the elderly," American University School of Public Affairs professor Claudia Persico said on X Monday. "Also, it appears to be a violation of the Clean Air Act. This is incredibly foolish."
The EPA proposal would mark a stark reversal of decades of policy under which the agency cited the estimated cost of avoided asthma attacks and premature deaths to support stronger clean air rules. The change is likely to make it easier to roll back limits on PM2.5 and ozone from coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills, and other polluting facilities.
“The idea that EPA would not consider the public health benefits of its regulations is anathema to the very mission of EPA,” Richard Revesz, faculty director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, told the Times.
“If you’re only considering the costs to industry and you’re ignoring the benefits, then you can’t justify any regulations that protect public health, which is the very reason that EPA was set up,” Revesz added.
The Environmental Protection Network (EPN), an advocacy group, said in a statement Monday that "EPA’s reported decision to ignore prevented deaths is part of a pattern of ignoring or downplaying health effects in the rulemaking process, including in its rulemaking on effluent guidelines for coal-fired power plants and its recent Waters of the United States rulemaking."
Critics of President Donald Trump's policies accuse his administration of repeatedly putting polluters—who contributed hundreds of millions of dollars toward reelecting the president and supporting other Republicans—over people.
"EPA should strengthen how it values human life and health, not pretend it doesn’t matter," Katie Tracy, senior regulatory policy advocate at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said Monday. "By refusing to monetize the benefits of cleaner air, the agency is effectively saying that preventing asthma attacks, heart disease, and early deaths have no dollar value at all."
"This unconscionable decision by the EPA should be called out for what it really is—a favor to corporate interests at the expense of the environment and public health," Tracy added. "EPA’s decision is not only shocking—it’s illegal and violates the Supreme Court’s instruction that the government cannot stack the deck to benefit polluters. Accordingly, if this disturbing policy leads to regulatory repeals or weak standards, it will certainly be challenged in court.”
During Trump's second term, the EPA has moved to repeal or replace the stronger carbon emission limits on fossil-fueled power plants put in place by the Biden administration, rescinded Biden-era fuel efficiency and emissions standards for cars and light trucks, revoked California's ability to enact stricter vehicle emissions rules, and signaled plans to overturn the agency's finding that greenhouse gases are a public health hazard.
The EPA has also weakened water and wetland protections, rolled back regulations limiting so-called "forever chemicals" in drinking water, dramatically cut or eliminated environmental justice programs, reduced enforcement of environmental violations, dismantled long-standing advisory and scientific panels, removed all mentions of human-caused climate change from its website, and more.
According to a 2024 EPN analysis, Trump's rollbacks could cause the deaths of nearly 200,000 people in the United States by 2050.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin—a former Republican congressman from New York with an abysmal 14% lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters—has also boasted about canceling around $20 billion worth of Biden-era green grants.
"EPA’s current leadership has abandoned EPA’s mission to protect human health and safety," EPN senior adviser Jeremy Symons said Monday. "Human lives don’t count. Childhood asthma doesn’t count. It is a shameful abdication of EPA’s responsibility to protect Americans from harm. Under this administration, the Environmental Protection Agency is now the Environmental Pollution Agency, helping polluters at the expense of human health."
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'Reckless and Lawless': Trump Admin Overhauls Childhood Vaccine Schedule
"This ill-considered decision will sow further chaos and confusion and erode confidence in immunizations," warned the American Academy of Pediatrics president.
Jan 05, 2026
Leading US medical groups were among the critics who forcefully condemned the Trump administration's Monday overhaul of federal vaccine recommendations for every child in the country.
Doctors and public health advocates have been warning of such changes since the US Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nearly a year ago.
Last month, in a presidential memorandum, Trump directed Kennedy and Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O'Neill, who is also acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "to review best practices from peer, developed countries for core childhood vaccination recommendations."
HHS said in a Monday statement that "after consulting with health ministries of peer nations, considering the assessment's findings, and reviewing the decision memo" presented by National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Food and Drug Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, O'Neill "formally accepted the recommendations and directed the CDC to move forward with implementation."
O'Neill claimed that "the data support a more focused schedule" and the HHS secretary said that "after an exhaustive review of the evidence, we are aligning the US childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus while strengthening transparency and informed consent," but leading experts pushed back against their framing.
“Changes of this magnitude require careful review, expert and public input, and clear scientific justification. That level of rigor and transparency was not part of this decision."
Dr. Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, an American Medical Association trustee, said in a statement that the AMA "is deeply concerned by recent changes to the childhood immunization schedule that affects the health and safety of millions of children. Vaccination policy has long been guided by a rigorous, transparent scientific process grounded in decades of evidence showing that vaccines are safe, effective, and lifesaving."
“Changes of this magnitude require careful review, expert and public input, and clear scientific justification. That level of rigor and transparency was not part of this decision," she continued. "When long-standing recommendations are altered without a robust, evidence-based process, it undermines public trust and puts children at unnecessary risk of preventable disease."
"The scientific evidence remains unchanged, and the AMA supports continued access to childhood immunizations recommended by national medical specialty societies," the doctor added. "We urge federal health leaders to recommit to a transparent, evidence-based process that puts children's health and safety first and reflects the realities of our nation's disease burden."
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) President Dr. Andrew D. Racine was similarly critical of the "dangerous and unnecessary" move, stressing that "the long-standing, evidence-based approach that has guided the US immunization review and recommendation process remains the best way to keep children healthy and protect against health complications and hospitalizations."
As Racine explained:
Said to be modeled in part after Denmark's approach, the new recommendations issued today by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer recommend routine immunization for many diseases with known impacts on America's children, such as hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), flu, and meningococcal disease. AAP continues to recommend that children be immunized against these diseases, and for good reason; thanks to widespread childhood immunizations, the United States has fewer pediatric hospitalizations and fewer children facing serious health challenges than we would without this community protection.
The United States is not Denmark, and there is no reason to impose the Danish immunization schedule on America's families. America is a unique country, and Denmark's population, public health infrastructure, and disease-risk differ greatly from our own.
At a time when parents, pediatricians, and the public are looking for clear guidance and accurate information, this ill-considered decision will sow further chaos and confusion and erode confidence in immunizations. This is no way to make our country healthier.
The doctor urged parents who "have questions about vaccines or anything else" to speak with their pediatricians and pledged that the AAP "will continue to stand up for children, just as we have done for the past 95 years."
Dr. Robert Steinbrook, Health Research Group director at the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, also slammed Kennedy and his deputies for starting out "2026 by escalating and accelerating their mindless assault on the childhood and adolescent immunization schedule."
"Extreme and arbitrary changes to the childhood vaccination schedule without full public discussion and scientific and evidence-based vetting put children and families at risk and undermine public health," Steinbrook said. "The uncalled-for changes are likely to further erode trust in vaccines and decrease immunization rates, rather than increase confidence or boost vaccine uptake, as federal health officials assert. Once again, medical professional societies and states must act to prevent suffering and death from preventable diseases."
As the Associated Press noted Monday: "States, not the federal government, have the authority to require vaccinations for schoolchildren. While CDC requirements often influence those state regulations, some states have begun creating their own alliances to counter the Trump administration's guidance on vaccines."
Lawrence Gostin, founding chair of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law Georgetown University, predicted that "red states will mostly follow HHS guidance. Blue states will certainly keep the current schedule. We'll see a checkerboard of different rules across America. Infectious diseases will surge as pathogens don't respect state borders."
Ripping the CDC's move as "reckless and lawless," Gostin added that "RFK Jr. is plunging the nation into uncertainty and confusion. Will pharmacies and pediatricians offer vaccines without clear recommendations? Will insurers cover vaccines? Will school boards worry about liability? Needless hospitalizations and deaths are all but certain to occur."
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We Need to Get the Private Healthcare Incentives Out of Our Hospital Bathrooms
An attempt to procure toilet paper and face tissues during a hospital stay illustrates everything that's wrong with the US healthcare system.
Dec 20, 2025
Have you ever seen quality toilet paper in a hospital restroom? Seriously. Most of the time, we are all just damned lucky if we have a clean bathroom in the patient’s room, and we all know the situation with most hospitals’ public restrooms (yuck).
Decent toilet paper seems to be a small request to make of your hospital given that the status of our bodily functions (digestive issues or issues causing digestive issues) is often the reason for hospitalization. And sometimes we must get well enough to have our digestive systems functioning to be released. The health industry earns massive profits—so much more in daily charges than any hotel room you or I have ever imagined staying in—and yet the decisions made about our most basic comforts related to personal hygiene don’t reflect those profits at all.
With Congress deciding to dump the Affordable Care Act subsidies, hospitals will have to tighten their belts even more to retain their precious profits, so I doubt we will be getting Charmin and Puffs any time soon.
Well, most hospitals secure their cheap, one-ply toilet paper under lock and key. I couldn’t believe it, though you’d think I would by now. Like they are guarding gold at Fort Knox, the hospital corporations protect their toilet paper and paper towel assets more than they protect patients by locking up the worst and cheapest paper products they could secure. Having extra replacement rolls anywhere seems really a stretch for these facilities too. And if the staff who hold the keys are not at work or if the hospital is short-staffed like many are these days, getting paper products may be on you. It sure was for us, and HCA Healthcare is true to that trend of cutting corners on one of the items that “touches” patients and their families.
Not having toilet paper to wipe a sore bottom or tissue to blow your nose is one thing. We wonder who buys the supplies for the operating room?
I begged people to find us toilet paper and paper towels—nurses when I could find one, techs when they had one, housekeeping on the days there was one, and even tried teasing that I’d bring it from home. The first day we got by, but by the fifth day we were weary of the begging and saying, “Pretty please” to anyone who looked like they might give a damn. No one did until one young man cleaning an empty room figured out that if I was asking for his bucket and mop, I might need help somewhere. He was getting that empty room ready to fill again with more revenue—a new patient—no time for him to attend to patients already in a room languishing without needed services and no toilet paper.
I sent messages through the patient portal because no one answered any admin lines for patients and families. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
MyHealthONE Help Desk
Please get my husband paper towels & TP in his bathroom and clean the room
You
(Sent) 8/9/2025
at 5:02 pm
We know it's a weekend, and we are very sorry its hard to staff the hospital appropriately for that, but I'd like my husband to have paper towel and toilet paper in his bathroom so I do not have to provide paper products to him from outside PSLs in Denver. I need a mop and cleaning supplies to clean his room as well. I'll do it because yesterday, Friday, only one tech had to cover the floor, one cleaning person stuck her head in and said it looked good, and today it is gross. Just gross. My husband has tried to clean his own bathroom several times. If he is hurt doing that, I fear the problems that will create for him. Please help us. Please.
I hope you will follow here that if they will do this with basic supplies and services, my friends, what do you think they do with all the other purchases they make to run the hospital?
I’m sharing my DoorDash receipt copy below as a cautionary tale:
Door Dash Order Complete
Saturday, August 9, 2025 at 5:42 pm
Enjoy!
Your Dasher: [Redacted]
Total $19.79;
Retail Delivery Fees $0.29
Delivery Fee $2.99
Service Fee $3.00, $.99
Estimated Tax $1.66
Dasher Tip $5.00
Total $27.73
Payment
[Redacted] · 8/9/2025 · 5:26 pm
$27.73
Address
1719 E 19th Ave
Denver, CO 80218
Instructions: I will meet you at the curb of the Main entrance, main lobby of PresStLukes Hospital. You need to hand this order directly to me.
I sat in the lobby of a health industry behemoth that made more than $600 million in clear profit last year and received my delivery order. Exhausted from being the unpaid staff of the hospital—Presbyterian St. Lukes in Denver, an HCA Healthcare facility—at least I had tissue to wipe my nose that didn’t leave me raw and bleeding like their protected paper did. I cried a lot, and no one had a tissue. Patients are not given facial tissue anymore nor are they given other personal hygiene items. It must be an expense they just couldn’t justify.
None of this ought to make you feel safe. Not having toilet paper to wipe a sore bottom or tissue to blow your nose is one thing. We wonder who buys the supplies for the operating room? The neonatal intensive care unit? Do they cut those same corners with everything? What do you think?
The only way out of this mess is to finally pass universal single payer, improved and expanded Medicare for All and get the profit incentives out of our hospital bathrooms. Please.
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